Arundhati Roy Interviewed by Mohan Vellapally on Dec 30, 2025 about her Memoir

 

Arundhati Roy and Mohan Vellapally on stage at Pulse on Dec 30, 2025

Ms Arundhati Roy gave an interview at an event on Dec 30, 2025 where her memoir was re-examined by Mr Mohan Vellapally, who brought out its finer points by asking a number of questions. Ms Roy responded in the time available with incisive comments, and to further elaborate, read sections of her memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me. This threw light on various facets of the complex relationship between her and her mother.

Arundhati Roy with Rema and Mohan Vellapally in their home

It became clear that her visits worldwide for readings of the memoir are not merely for marketing, but in her case establishes the essential contact between her and her readers that matters so much to her. A previous blog post shows just how she goes about cultivating her loyal, adoring, fan base by extending her love to them. It is an important counter-balance because she has a large number of detractors among the conservative right wing factions in India who habitually hurl epithets like ‘urban Naxal’ and ‘anti-national’ at her.

Raina John and Lalith Roy sing the Beatles song ‘Mother Mary Comes To Me’

The reading and interview was preceded by by the Beatles song Mother Mary Comes To Me sung by her brother Lalith Roy with Raina John:

https://www.instagram.com/pulse.unplugged/reel/DTIGKFNESAP/

Arundhati Roy began her readings by acknowledging the beautiful event her brother Lalith put together

The interview with Ms Aurundhati Roy was conducted by Mohan Vellapally at the beautiful auditorium Lalith Roy built in his Pulse centre for performing musicians. Here is the entire 1-hour interview on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTIPpkkk8y5/

During the course of the interview Ms Roy brought up various topics which are of interest to readers everywhere. In this blog post I cover a few under the headings below.

Kavita with Arundhati Roy posing at the book signing.

Humorous Poems – Dec 5, 2025

It was a delightful evening of enjoyment, which started off with a high tea of fabulous snacks contributed by all the readers, and enjoyed in the warm hospitality of Arundhaty’s home. 

The Reading Group outside by the lawn

The group inside – Pamela had left

KRG Readers gathered for the year-end joyful session of Humorous Poems where by custom everyone wears fanciful costumes, often illustrating the poem they are going to read. They make a motley crew glad to drop all pretence of literary accomplishment for the fun of having a rollicking time with stories in rhyme that reveal the light touch in poets, even those as venerable as T.S. Eliot.

The sad comic poet Edward Lear could not be omitted as he was the founder of the Limerick poetic form which  features anapaests rhymed AABBA fashion in 5-line stanzas to celebrate comical events. There is the famous one about Calcutta:

There once was a man from Calcutta

Who coated his throat with butta

Thus converting his snore

From a thunderous roar

To a soft, melodious mutta.

(L. Kilham)

Here’s a tribute to Lear:

Although at the limericks of Lear

We may feel a temptation to sneer,

We should never forget

That we owe him a debt

For his work as the first pioneer.

Devika produced a superb piece by Nissim Ezekiel, the Bombay poet who in a moment of light musing delivered a colloquial exchange between two friends, in the kind of quaint speech that is full of gauche Indian ways of using English, such as using ‘backside’ for ‘rear.’ Which reminds one of a famous limerick celebrating Sardar Baldev Singh, India’s first Defence Minister –

A visit to Lady Mountbatten

Found her ducks running round in the garden,

Baldev Singh then stated

His spirit elevated

How lovely your battakhs, so fattened!

Maya Angelou, not known for her comedic verse, was selected by Priya. She came in a costume wearing a trendy hat and carrying a basket of wool, mimicking Mrs. Ruth Anning (not a character in Virginia Woolf's novel which we read, Mrs Dalloway) but instead, the protagonist of Woolf's short story titled Together and Apart, which is set at one of Clarissa Dalloway's parties. Her poem was about a dauntless woman whom nothing frightens –

Panthers in the park

Strangers in the dark

No, they don't frighten me at all.

Saras took up a Cat poem of T.S Eliot that features the Pekes and the Pollicles – pollicies being perhaps a kind of  terrier given to barking. The battle between the dogs is shown in this video on YouTube, the The Battle of Pekes and the Pollicles. The ascending crescendo of cries overwhelms the neighbourhood in the battle:

Bark bark bark bark

Bark bark BARK BARK

Until you can hear them all over the Park.

Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles from Cats, the Musical

Th largest contribution to the estate of T.S. Eliot has accrued from the royalties of the famous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats, where a dramatic narrative is created around the poems in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. It was first released as a full production in 1981 in London. To imagine it all began with T.S. Eliot writing funny little cat poems as gifts to his god-children by various friends! 

Eliot Letter to Tandy family at The British Library

It was a delightful evening of enjoyment, which started off with a high tea with fabulous snacks contributed by all the readers, entertained in Arundhaty’s home to her customary hospitality. 

Eats on Dec 6, 2025 at the KRG Humorous Poems session

Diligent Reader Exercises (DREs) for Humorous Poems KRG session on Dec 5, 2025

1. While everyone was excited by the phallic energy of Geetha’s poem Asparagus, there is a 2-word phrase in that poem borrowed from a 17th century satirist we have recited before at KRG. What is the phrase, and who is the satirist?

2. In Joe’s poem selection, Under the Drooping Willow Tree, from the collection by Auden of The Oxford Book Of Light Verse, three lines have been substituted. Which are the lines? To refresh your memory go to page 408 of the W.H. Auden book:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ex6Xv5WFUPCsohxN3BgzsBcCXlj6Lq7e/view?usp=sharing

3. On the subject of family planning in Devika’s professor of Indianisms, Joe recited a haiku in Hindi to the gathering. Can you select any other subject touched on in Ezekiel’s poem The Professor, (for example. aches and pains, world is changing, score a century, weight and consequence, backside, etc.) and make a 17-syllable haiku in the famous form 5-7-5 in 3 lines? Preferably humorous, possibly scandalous.

4. Edward Lear (whom Thomo recited) almost single-handedly created the humorous poetic form called the Limerick which is rhymed in 5 lines as AABBA and has an anapaestic structure:

Lines 1, 2, and 5 each contain three anapaests (three “ta-ta-DUM” units) and have three stressed syllables.

ta-ta-DUM | ta-ta-DUM | ta-ta-DUM

Lines 3 and 4 each contain two anapaests (two “ta-ta-DUM” units) and have two stressed syllables.

ta-ta-DUM | ta-ta-DUM

But limericks can vary from that strict form …

FIND a limerick (or write your own) on any ONE of the following cities: Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Delhi.

5. Saras read a cat poem of T.S. Eliot, who demonstrated how adept he is at rhyming – something he never did in his ‘serious’ works. For whom did T.S. Eliot write his poems on cats? Which cat is labelled the ‘Napoleon of Crime’?

(Solutions are given at the end of the Consolidated Poems)

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle – Nov 21, 2025

 

The Hound of the Baskervilles – first edition 1902

Sherlock Holmes has been rated as one of the most popular fictional characters in history. His claim to fame is backed by an official world record. According to Guinness, Holmes is the “most portrayed literary human character in film & TV,” having been depicted on screen in over 250 films and hundreds of TV episodes. The stories have been translated into over 60 languages and Braille. Some iconic portrayals are by Basil Rathbone in the forties, and Jeremy Brett in the 80s and 90s. The enduring appeal of Holmes for over a century is a testament to his lasting impact. He consistently ranks at the top of “greatest character” lists and is an enduring literary figure. His stories have never gone out of print, and he has inspired one of the world's first and most dedicated fan communities.

Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett are both iconic Sherlock Holmes portrayals

His quixotic qualities, his unique enthusiasms, and vast range of expertise on esoteric subjects have contributed to his becoming an almost mythical figure. In the present novella, the third of four Conan Doyle wrote, a dark mystery presents itself and he has to put himself and his client in danger’s way to entrap the villain behind the baying hound on the moor that is heard during the ‘hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted.’ Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, who has by now become an admirer of Holmes’ methods, is called upon to assist in the planned denouement when Holmes hopes to catch the villain red-handed.

Portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle from the official website conandoyleestate.com

One of the charms of Conan Doyle’s writing is his use of words that have by now become archaic, such as Farrier (one who shoes horses), Almoner (an official responsible for distributing alms on behalf of another individual), Roysterer (a noisy and boisterous reveller), Pannikin (a small pan or drinking vessel of earthenware, what we would call a ‘khullar’ in Hindi), Tor (a high rock; a pile of rocks, gen. on the top of a hill), Goyal (a deep trench, a ravine). Then there are obsolete uses of verbs such as this:

the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat.

‘worry’ meaning to seize by the throat with the teeth and tear or lacerate; to kill or injure by biting and shaking. It is said, for example, of dogs or wolves attacking sheep, or of hounds when they seize their quarry. (OED definition). 

Sherlock Holmes with revolver and Watson in the Hound of the Baskervilles

The powers of observation of Holmes are the foremost among his detective skills. “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes,” he says. When the portrait of Hugo the Roysterer, who became the first known victim of a hound among the Baskervilles, is before them, Holmes observes an uncanny resemblance to Stapleton, and cries out to Watson: “Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.” 

The Grimpen Mire with its Tors is very atmospheric, full of boulders and mist and eerily open spaces, which help set the mood

Next to observation is his ability to frame a series of hypotheses after collecting as many facts as possible. Facts are the underpinning of every one of his deductions. Indeed the word ‘facts’ occurs 23 times in the novel. “An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours,” Holmes says. A third and perhaps crowning part of his intellectual apparatus is described in this famous saying of his: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (from The Sign of Four). His method of logical deduction works by ruling out all possibilities that are not feasible, based on the facts.

The novel is full of interesting characters like the butterfly hunter Stapleton who has discovered a species on the moor and is quite famous in entomological circles. There is a litigious community worker, Mr Frankland, who has filed cases to open up private lands for common access to walkers, and also done the opposite, close off his own land to public  trails. Of course, Holmes himself takes centre-stage with his  sharp powers of observation and deduction, combined with an eschewal of unverified assumptions, which give him a penetrating access to detective solutions. Some of the descriptions give a Gothic cast to the novel, for instance:

– the hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted, 

– two great stones worn and sharpened until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast,

– slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces,

Poetry Session – Oct 30, 2025

Of the ten poets read at this session only one was new, Ryan Teitman. All the others from Ben Jonson to W.H. Auden, and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish had been selected for previous readings. Had Priya been present we would have had one more new poet to add, George Sze.

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes - illustration

It began with the highly atmospheric and haunting ballad The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. The poem tells about the gallant outlaws of olden times and begins with the line

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

…

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

Ben Jonson invites a friend to supper

Ben Jonson the great rival dramatist to Shakespeare, came up with a feast for his patron that is described in lush terms, more poetic and detailed than any modern Michelin starred restaurant could muster:

An olive, capers, or some better salad

Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,

If we can get her, full of eggs, and then

Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony

Is not to be despaired of, for our money;

And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,

The sky not falling, think we may have larks.

The spirit of conviviality and shared enjoyment at the supper makes for delightful reading.

St. Cecilia with an Angel by Orazio Gentileschi (father of the renowned woman artist Artemesia Gentileschi). The organ is the symbol of St Cecilia

Auden was a fortuitous choice occasioned by Joe’s desire to remember his sister, Cecilia. Auden wrote the lyrics of a chorale that was composed by his friend Benjamin Britten whose birthday fell on the feast day of St. Cecilia on Nov 22. The refrain has the lines:

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

To all musicians, appear and inspire:

It ends with an instructive line:

O wear your tribulation like a rose.

Ada Limón, the current poet laureate of America, was read in a simple poem, The Conditional. The poem imagines all the malign things that can happen but reminds us it is enough that tomorrow comes, and we are still alive to enjoy the day:

Say we spend our last moments staring

at each other, hands knotted together,

clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.

Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be

enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,

right here, feeling lucky.

Robert Frost – man peering into a well

Robert Frost, a perennial favourite among our readers, is here represented by a strange poem in which a man peers constantly at the still water in a well, seeing himself reflected – but one day Something happens. That something is what disturbs this proto-Narcissus from succumbing to his enduring fancy for himself. Readers were reminded of another modern, sitting atop the world with only himself to admire!

Darwish, the poet of Palestine, who made it his calling to defend his land against all comers ready to snatch it from his compatriots, writes:

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: 

on this earth, the Lady of Earth,

mother of all beginnings and ends. 

She was called Palestine. 

Her name later became

Palestine. 

My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.

Imtiaz Dharker reminds us that to be in a minority is no disaster, indeed it builds one up to resist all encroachment on one’s freedom and meet others on an equal footing. She writes:

I don’t fit,

like a clumsily-translated poem;

She has become a prescribed author for school children in UK.

Bob Dylan delivers his Nobel lecture finally – photo by Lester Cohen

Bob Dylan has been a favourite songster-poet of Thomo’s and this time one of his signal recordings, Mr. Tambourine Man, was sung by Thomo, paying homage to one of the greats of the modern world who is still going strong at age 84.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

…

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship

My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip

My toes too numb to step

Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’

It is a song about seeking inspiration and escape from the mundane through a mystical, musical figure, often interpreted as a muse. The real Tambourine Man was musician Bruce Langhorne, who played a large Turkish frame drum that looked like a giant tambourine on several covers of Dylan's recordings; Dylan confirmed Bruce was indeed the inspiration. 

Bruce Langhorne – Tambourine Man

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin – Sept 19, 2025

 

Giovanni’s Room, first edition, Dial Press, NY, 1956

Giovanni’s Room (GR) tells of a white American who in those postwar days shipped out to Paris, intent on finding out who he was and what he wanted to do. In his quest to escape from the preset world of America and take a fresh view, David begins with the holdover of an American girlfriend who sort of wants to partner him, but has yet to decide and goes off to Spain. 

David is left to himself and having no associates except a well-off older man who likes younger men and lends them money, goes pub crawling. There he meets and takes a shine to a man who is described only as the ultimate exciting homosexual man would be:

in slow motion … carried a glass, … walked on its toes, the flat hips moved with a dead, horrifying lasciviousness. … glittered in the dim light; the thin, black hair was violent with oil, combed forward, hanging in bangs; the eyelids gleamed with mascara, the mouth raged with lipstick. The face was white and thoroughly bloodless with some kind of foundation cream; it stank of powder and a gardenia-like perfume. The shirt, open coquettishly to the navel

The inevitable happens – thrown from an absent American girl to a foppish Italian youth, an unsure David can’t decide. Thus David, still ashamed of his homosexual propensities, is captivated by the tragic youth Giovanni who is ill-treated by his bar employer, Guillaume.

James Baldwin’s 1951 address book includes the names of other artists, such as Richard Wright, with whom he interacted

Giovanni’s room turns out to be a shabby place where David seems to enjoy a measure of devotion and love from his male partner, but is unable to commit himself fully. Recall the maxim of the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, “Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing,” – the name of a book he wrote. David is unable to achieve that and after his girl friend Hella returns from Spain, his double-minded wavering leads to his unhappiness and Giovanni’s self-destruction. The sunny hopes of a Parisian summer sink into an abyss. 

Henry James – signed picture hung over his desk in Paris

People have drawn all kinds of lessons from this novel, about shame and guilt, about having the courage to be oneself in the face of societal disapproval, and so on. A different conclusion would be that though happiness in human love towards a particular person, arises often from the thrill of sexual attraction, its long term persistence depends on a bond of loyalty. The thrill may abate but the bond will still keep pouring out quiet happiness.

James Baldwin working at his desk in Paris

In the modern world it would help to build oneself when young, acquire competence in some chosen sphere and a measure of independence, before committing to emotional love with another person. Then when it happens it will be between two equals. On the other hand, committing to love from a position of inferiority or lack of attainment, leaves one partner weak and dependent on the other. Does one need to marry to achieve happiness? That's another question many could answer in the negative. 

Baldwin – ‘The story of the Negro in America is the Story of America’

Baldwin’s writing is superb in painting the overheated atmosphere of the bars in Paris where much else happens besides emotional connections. The rambles in Parisian streets and the interjection of French slang frames the novel intimately. Baldwin gives space for Hella to appear sympathetically pliant to David’s moods, ready to take the plunge and make babies for him. 

The devotion of Giovanni to David was remarked on by readers as one of the beautiful things in the novel. His mental clarity contrasts with David’s hesitation; the guilt David feels in the end for Giovanni’s degradation underlines the tragedy for both. Though the novel has a large theme of homosexuality, it only serves to set up the disappointment that awaits those who are not willing to take the risk and follow their own interests, setting aside the conformist demands of the social culture around them. 

Arundhati Roy launches her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me on Sept 2, 2025 in Kochi

 

Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me – front cover photo by Carlo Buldrini

The global launch of Suzanna Arundhati Roy’s memoir of her mother, Mother Mary Comes To Me (MMCTM), took place on Sept 2 at Mother Mary Hall of St Teresa’s College in Kochi. Ms Roy came down from New Delhi with a host of friends and admirers, publishers and editors, to ensure that the book would take off on its world-wide exposition from Kochi, her home ground, so to speak. Her last launch from here was of the Malayalam translation of The God of Small Things (TGOST) by Priya A. S. from an open air site on the Marina close by. 

Arundhati Roy in green saree and red choli – Feb 3, 2011

On that occasion Ms Roy arrived looking distant and stately in a lovely blue-green saree, the colour of the river Meenachil, wearing a trim red choli with a necklace of black string attached to a pendant of square metal secured to a fragment of nondescript red fabric. On this day, fourteen years later, she arrived in a floppy red top over blue jeans, relaxed and ready to mingle with the crowd gathered to celebrate her literary presence in the city. It was the middle of the Onam season and the roads were crowded but those who wanted to meet her arrived an hour and a half in advance of the slated 6:30 pm event to find the venue three-quarters full. There were more than a thousand attendees, with the overflow from Mother Mary Hall necessitating the setting up of a second hall to accommodate the crowd. Former students of her mother’s Pallikoodam School were there in strength as a special contingent.

Arundhati Roy in red top and blue jeans at Mother Mary Hall, Sep 2, 2025

The audience was a diverse mix of people, young and old, along with friends, family, movie stars, and publishers. It was organised by DC Books and Penguin Random House India. The event bore the typical marks  of an Arundhati Roy event, filled with emotion, wit, and political discourse. “Almost everyone that I love is gathered in this room. That’s a pretty dangerous thing, given our government,” laughed Ms Roy. 

Arundhati Roy with her mother Mary Roy

Ms Roy identified the origin of the book to a time after her mother’s death on Sept 1, 2022 – “I was walking in London one day with my agent, and I said to him that my mother was my shelter and my storm.” He turned around and said “So when are you writing this book?” 

In a way, Ms Roy had been writing this book all her life; whether she was spending her fatherless childhood in Kerala or going to college in Delhi – her mother was an inescapable presence in her mind. She went away at age eighteen and gradually discovered who she could be and flowered in her multitudinous ways far from the critical eye of her mother. But she had been taking notes all the while, as writers do. And here after a difficult journey she was ready to present to public gaze the persona of her mother and her own relationship along with the myriad battles she fought along the way, mirroring several that caught her mother up in a different storm 2,600 kms away.

Israeli airstrikes destroy buildings in the Gaza Strip. Photo: © UNRWA/Ashraf Amra – more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, half of them women and children; the total Israeli death toll has risen to nearly 2,000

But Ms Roy noted that the troubles of the world constantly knock on our doors for desperate attention; she made special mention of the horrors of the war in Gaza, linking the ongoing suffering there to the feeling that “someone else, someone quiet, is being beaten in another room” when she receives recognition. She emphasised that her awareness of the crisis isn't triggered by guilt but by a genuine understanding of the interconnectedness of suffering: “Wherever you look, things are happening, and you can't just think of your own story,” she said. 

Reading the Romantic Poets – Aug 8, 2025

The Romantic Poets session is always interesting since it deals with poets who inaugurated new ways of writing about nature and the human response to beauty. Four of the Big Six were represented – Wordsworth, Keats, Byron and Shelley – in addition to three women, one Italian poet and one Irish  poet of the romantic period.

It was significant that Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of William, who overshadowed his sister’s contributions to his poetry and eclipsed her poetry as well, was given her voice in this session. 

And Emily Brontë, sister of Charlotte, whose novel Jane Eyre we read last month, appeared in a sensitive poem recounting a night long vigil watching the stars, a worthy accompaniment to van Gogh’s painting Starry Night.

Van Gogh – Starry Night

Thomas Moore, the Irish poet of the Romantic period, is even better known as a composer of music with his multivolume work A Selection of Irish Melodies. A reader recited a poem of his and discussed his important works such as A Minstrel Boy and Lalla Rookh. Another reader wanted to present him also, but was prevented by lack of an Internet connection.

Byron’s long poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, was excerpted in a long piece by Geetha. He Was the poet labelled “Bad, Mad, and Dangerous to know“ by one of his admirers, Lady Caroline Lamb. The poem gave Byron instant fame as it sold very well before he left on his fatal expedition to win the independence of Greece from Ottoman rule. Statues of his have sprung up in Greece, and streets and schools are named after him in a grateful country:

Statue of Lord Byron in Athens

A rather tragic tale by William Wordsworth recounting the pastoral story of a farmer (Michael) who lost his land was read in excerpts; it served to remind us of what is lost by ordinary people tilling the land when urbanisation overtakes a country.

There is a straggling heap of unhewn stones! 

And with that faint memorial, the tale 

Ends.

One of our readers wished to illustrate how well the current Large Language Models perform by putting forward its translation of the romantic poem L’Infinito by Giacomo Leopardi; but readers uniformly declared their preference for a human translation that rendered the poem into sonnet form in English. Chalk one up for mere mortals! But we must regret not knowing the identity of the mysterious ‘Z.G.’ attributed as the author of this translation of the famous Italian poem about infinity, solitude and the sublime – although it appeared as far back as 1910 in the Oxford Book of Italian Verse.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – July 14, 2025

 

Jane Eyre An Autobiography first edition 1847

Charlotte Brontë wrote the novel Jane Eyre and published it in 1847 under the male pseudonym, Currer Bell. It became a classic of literature over the years, both for its tender love story and its portrayal of a fiercely independent woman who would not brook male patriarchy, or other kinds of domination by family members, school directors, upper class nobility, and assorted tyrants and bullies. As the novel makes clear the qualities genteel women were expected to master were only these – stitching, playing the piano, reading and speaking French, and painting. 

Ultimately, a novel depends on strong portrayal of its cast of characters, and Charlotte Brontë gave to each of them the coloration of a novelist who enters into the story and creates vibrant portraits of villains, heroes, and the miscellaneous folk who play their role in what is now labelled as a Bildungsroman, a novel that runs the course of  a person’s formative years and development. Jane Eyre has become an essential part of English literature and this exposition by Benjamin McEvoy is an excellent introduction, to what he calls “one of the most riveting love stories ever penned in English Literature.”  It also takes you on the journey of Charlotte Brontë’s life story, which is partly sublimated in the novel.

Jane Eyre – ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me’

Of course, novelists base a lot writing on their life experiences, but they live a rich inner life too in the imagination; they also borrow from what they read. There’s clear evidence in Jane Eyre that Charlotte Brontë not only read a lot, but her mind became a storehouse of words from her wide reading. One of her correspondents a gentlemen called George Lewes (partner of Mary Evans, i.e George Eliot) advised her to eschew imagination in favour of life experience. Here was her answer:

Imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?' 

Anna Paquin as young Jane Eyre (1996 film)

We have Gothic elements too in Jane Eyre. The first premonition is the strange shrieking at night from the attic which forebode a disaster in the making. 

This was a demoniac laugh—low, suppressed, and deep—

The summoning of Jane from the remote moor dwelling of the Rivers siblings with a call ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ while the candle was dying and the room was full of moonlight, leads to the ultimate reconciliation with Rochester. 

What about the language of the novel? It has a tendency to be Latinate and elevated with a vocabulary that forces a modern reader to reach for the dictionary often. The sentence structures are intricate and impart a formal tone that requires some getting used to. An appeal to one of the Large Language Models (LLMs) elicited ~100 words that are now archaic, obsolete, or rare in usage in modern English. Joe could find another 35 examples, besides, from his own notes while reading. Jane Eyre is a hothouse of rare plants that have to be observed, savoured and studied. It’s no Mills & Boon romp.

Charlotte Brontë's  'Book of Rhymes' sold for £1m

Major influences are evident of the Bible and Shakespeare, two venerable sources that English authors mine. Often she uses the Bible to point out the hypocrisy of pontificating characters like Mr Brocklehurst who tirelessly quote scripture in defence of ill-treating children in Lowood School. But the most elemental use of the Bible by Charlotte Brontë, goes all the way back to Genesis and the words ‘ help meet for him (Adam)’ as a definition of woman. The absolute rejection of this imposed status governs Jane’s rejection St. John’s suit.

Significant hints of Shakespearean characters are sprinkled in Jane Eyre. For instance, Bertha Mason (the ghostly presence in the attic) prowls at night in the upper rooms like Lady Macbeth sleepwalking in her guilt. Rochester resembles King Lear, beginning in arrogance, and suffering losses (Rochester’s blindness/maiming; Lear’s madness), until he achieves humility through suffering.

A fitting summation would be this quotation from Chapter 33 when Jane spurns Rochester’s portrayal of her as a captive bird before she departs:

“I am no bird, and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”